


Illumination

by xraelynn



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Closure, Episode: s07e10 Sein Und Zeit, Episode: s07e11 Closure, F/M, Martha's Vineyard, Post-Episode: s07e10 Sein und Zeit, Post-Episode: s07e11 Closure, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 09:11:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17805206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xraelynn/pseuds/xraelynn
Summary: No man is an island, John Donne had written, but John Donne hadn’t met Fox Mulder, who’d grown up on one.Scully joins Mulder on Martha's Vineyard as he processes his mother's death and the truth about Samantha, and both partners deal with some truths about their evolving relationship. Takes place shortly after "Sein und Zeit/Closure" in S7.





	1. Retreat

“Scully, you don’t have to come all the way out here.”

She cradled the phone between her ear and her shoulder, hoping the movement would stifle her small sigh. Seven years, she thought as she stuck her key in the ignition. Seven years and we’re still learning not to lie to each other.

“Hang on, let me run that through my Mulder translator,” she said drily, shifting the car into drive. She could feel him hesitating.

“You have a Mulder translator? Promise not to share it with Skinner,” he said finally.

“Among the many other things I’ve promised not to share with Skinner,” she agreed, regretting the words as soon as they left her mouth. She could almost hear Mulder’s jaw tighten on the other end of the line.

Seven years, she thought wearily.

“I’ll call you when I get on the ferry,” she said abruptly, and ended the call before he could protest.

* * *

No man is an island, John Donne had written, but John Donne hadn’t met Fox Mulder, who’d grown up on one.

Scully pulled her coat tighter around herself, watching the shore recede as the boat slowly cruised through the choppy water. She’d only been to the Vineyard once, and that time she and Skinner had flown, tight-lipped and silent, cursing both her partner and John Lee Roche.

Now she had a 45-minute ferry ride ahead of her and plenty others to curse: Ed Truelove, who’d left a room full of law enforcement officers white-faced and weeping; Harold Piller, his voice cracking with desperation; and Teena Mulder, who’d been nearly three decades too late to save her daughter and one goddamn night too late to console her son.

Mrs. Mulder had left instructions to be buried in Raleigh, North Carolina, but Samantha Mulder hadn’t left behind a body at all. Scully’s throat constricted as she looked down at the dark, roiling waves. If the Pacific was a warm place with no memory, then the freezing Atlantic churned ominously with the past.

* * *

Scully had planned to take a cab from the ferry terminal, but as she walked off the boat she spotted Mulder in jeans and a bulky winter coat leaning casually against a pillar. He was holding up a hand-lettered sign that read SCULLY and when he smiled apologetically, she felt a rush of affection for him. She’d been right to come.

“I didn’t order a car service,” she said as she stopped in front of him.

“That’s why I didn’t send one,” he replied, reaching automatically for her bag — aside from his proclivity for ditching her in the line of duty, she thought, Mulder had always had excellent manners. She let him hoist the bag into the trunk as she studied him and, before he could move around to the driver’s side, impulsively reached for his hand. He glanced down at her in mild surprise.

Just over a month ago he had kissed her in the antiseptic glare of a hospital waiting room, chastely and sweetly, as if they hadn’t just spent the last hour of the millennium firing shots at dead men in a dark basement. Then had come a final reckoning with Donnie Pfaster and a final judgment with a snake-charming reverend. The snake bites on Mulder’s neck were still healing when he had flown to California in search of Amber Lynn LaPierre. Aside from the moments when one or both of them had been covered in blood or tears, this felt like the closest she’d been to him physically in weeks.

“I know I didn’t have to come out here,” she said quietly. “But you don’t have to do this alone.”

She saw his throat work as he swallowed, and in her mind she heard the voice of Teena Mulder on his answering machine. _So much that I’ve left unsaid for reasons I hope one day you’ll understand._

It was time for them both to stop keeping silent, she thought.

“Thank you,” he said finally. “For being here.”

* * *

They were both quiet as Mulder steered the car out of the parking lot, but it felt like a companionable silence, and Scully felt some of the tension leave her as the shops and houses she saw out the window gave way to rolling fields.

“I had no idea Martha’s Vineyard was this rural,” she commented after they’d driven for 20 minutes without passing a single stoplight.

“No? My childhood best friend was a sheep,” he said with a straight face, and her mouth quirked.

Three years earlier, in a tiny town in Pennsylvania, she’d dismissed Mulder’s fantasy about settling down in a small town as ludicrous. But on this narrow, two-lane road where the turnoffs were named “Nat’s Farm Lane” and “Shadbush Hollow,” it began to make more sense. Mulder’s childhood took shape in her mind: bike rides along isolated roads, the smell of the salty sea in the air. They turned right onto a dirt road with a lone mailbox at the end whose address seemed familiar somehow: 2790 Vine Street.

“How close are we to the house you grew up in?” she asked curiously.

“You’re looking at it,” Mulder responded as he pulled the car to a stop in front of a modest two-story house. She looked at him in amazement, and he ducked his head.

“My father sold it to a family after he and my mother divorced. They rent it out for an obscenely high price to summer people,” he explained. “Not much demand for it in February. Ron saw me on the news, heard about my mother…” His voice caught and his shoulders rotated in what might have been a shrug. “Said I was welcome to stay if I needed some time.”

Mulder tipped his head back against the seat. “I haven’t been out here in years,” he said. “Even the rocks look the same.”

He turned to look at her. “And I would know, since my head is as hard as one,” he said with a small smile.

“Ha, ha,” she said obligingly as she unfolded herself from Mulder’s car and gazed up at his childhood home. When she breathed in, the air smelled sharp and clean. Mulder was watching her.

“She loved it here in winter,” he murmured, gesturing to the silent house before them. “My mother. Most people treat the Vineyard as a summer destination, but we left for the house in Quonochontaug” — his voice faltered briefly — “as soon as school was out. My mother couldn’t stand the summer crowds. She preferred her Vineyard like her family: isolated and cold.”

He smiled as though he was kidding, but there was no warmth in it. Scully wasn’t sure whether to protest — she’d seen those goofy home videos of the Mulder family preparing for Halloween — or agree with him.

In the end she did neither; Mulder had had enough lectures on family loyalty to last a lifetime. Instead she moved closer to him and did the only thing she could think of to do: She wrapped her arms around him, tucking her head underneath his chin. She almost felt rather than heard Mulder whisper the words into her hair.

“Let’s go inside before you freeze,” he said.

* * *

The house had clearly been updated since the Mulder family had left it behind in the 1970s, decorated with a nautical theme that Scully thought her own father would have appreciated. Mulder looked incongruously at home puttering around the modern kitchen, retrieving two mugs emblazoned with maps of the island and bearing the phrase “Relax...it’s not the mainland.”

Scully took a sip of coffee and studied her mug. “So where are we?” she asked, tapping the mug map. She saw something like gratitude flicker in his eyes — either he was pleased she was showing interest in a place that had only been the source of pain for him for so long, or he was thankful she hadn’t come to demand he wrestle with his demons immediately.

Mulder reached over and tipped her mug carefully toward him. His hands, warm from gripping his own mug of coffee, grazed hers. His thumb lazily came to rest at a spot in the southwest, about an inch to the right of the handle.

“Just about here,” he said. “Up-island.”

“Up?” she repeated. Mulder nodded, gently moving her palm so that it was covering the eastern half of the map.

“This,” he explained, “is down-island. This” — his long fingers passed over the western half — “is up. It’s from the old whaling days. As you head west — ”

“ — your coordinate of longitude goes up,” she finished, recognition dawning on her. He grinned.

“Aye, I forgot you were a scallywag yourself,” he beamed.

“That’s a pirate, Mulder,” she said patiently, but she gave him a small smile.

“I was a landlubber myself as a kid,” he continued, sitting back as he regarded the mug.

“You’re not all that fond of sea voyages, I recall,” Scully said thoughtfully, remembering their doomed Norwegian expedition aboard the Zehar. Compared to some of their more recent tragedies, that quiet brush with death felt in retrospect almost quaint.

“My stomach is not all that fond of sea voyages,” Mulder corrected, looking faintly queasy even as he spoke. “I didn’t get off-island much as a kid. There’s nothing like blowing chunks in front of half your neighbors to convince you to stick close to home.”

She thought again of Mulder’s few fond reminisces of his childhood, how the theme of freedom and exploration of the land close to home ran through everything he had told her. Her own childhood felt like a string of cardboard boxes constantly being packed and unpacked in base housing.

“You must have charted every inch of the island,” she said.

“Every shell on every beach,” he agreed. “I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t a tree at Fulling Mill Brook I didn’t water as a kid.”

Registering her blank look, he laughed. It was a rich, full laugh, and it struck Scully as a sound she hadn’t heard in a very long time.

“By peeing on it, I mean,” he said, his eyes alive with long-ago mischief. “C’mon, Scully, you have brothers.”

She smiled despite herself.

“It’s good to see you, Mulder,” she said softly, taking a sip of her coffee. The smile in his eyes dimmed as he looked away.

“I, uh...I didn’t mean to run out of town on you,” he said quietly, his eyes fixed down on his coffee. “I just thought I...needed some time.”

Mulder’s face was smooth and calm now, but for days she hadn’t stopped seeing his expression of devastation and betrayal whenever she looked at him.

It turned out that she had needed some time too.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said.

* * *

They had been walking for just a few minutes along the road that led into town — Mulder assured her that the lack of sidewalks meant it was perfectly safe to go wandering down the middle of the street, though Scully had her doubts — when she spotted a flock of fluffy white mounds beyond a low stone wall.

“Mulder, those are sheep,” she said. One sheep looked back at her impassively, giving no notice of her gaping at them. It looked as though they could have hopped the wall and found themselves in the Mulders’ backyard.

“Mmm,” he said absently, then gave her a mischievous glance. “I wasn’t kidding about my childhood best friend. Her name was — ” he gave a bleating sound, and she knew they were both thinking about their brief turn as herders on the Peacocks’ property.

“Yeah, this farm’s been around for centuries,” he continued, kicking a rock toward the shoulder of the road. “Samantha wanted to stop and visit the lambs just about every day on the way home from school.”

Scully kept deliberately silent in hopes of encouraging him to say more. Mulder so rarely talked about his sister as anything other than the holy grail for his lonely quest. Scully realized with a pang of sadness that she knew almost nothing about her.

But Mulder had fallen silent, lost in a private memory. As they turned onto a dirt road, Scully found herself revising the picture of Mulder’s childhood she’d always kept privately in her head. She’d judged Mulder’s casual disregard for expensive clothes and impeccable manners to imagine a vaguely aristocratic upbringing for him; she’d always envisioned him at a snobby finishing school, not hanging out with sheep.

They ambled along the road until the dirt gave way to sand and Scully began to hear the familiar rush of the ocean.

“Take off your shoes,” Mulder urged her, yanking off his own sneaker with a flourish.

“Mulder, it’s 30 degrees out,” she protested.

“It’s tradition!” he yelled over a gust of wind.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” she retorted, but she obligingly slipped off her shoes and shuddered as her toes sank into the freezing sand.

“Do you know how much they charge for parking here in the summer for the pleasure of doing that?” Mulder asked, watching her with visible amusement. He put his hand on her shoulder and gently steered her down the path that led to the beach.

Scully drew in a breath. Boulders and rock formations rose dramatically out of the sand at the water’s edge, giving the impression of statues standing sentry at the shore. In the distance she could see waves pummeling the cliffs, which seemed to be fighting a losing battle against erosion.

Mulder spread his arms wide and let his eyes closed. Scully watched him as he inhaled deeply through.

“This was my real childhood home,” he said.

There was ocean mist clinging to his eyelashes. She remembered the last time she had been on a beach, her sweat sliding ominously down her neck as Mulder lay dying on the other side of the world.

Now the air was bitingly cold, but as she stood there drinking in the sight of him, she didn’t feel the chill.    

* * *

 


	2. Respite

Sleeping late the next morning left Scully feeling heavy-limbed and foggy as she padded downstairs. There was a note tacked to the refrigerator.

 _S_ — _Gone for a run. Back soon. Help yourself to_ — Whatever she could help herself to was lost in the illegibility of Mulder’s scrawl, but Scully felt an unexpected warmth spread through her that had nothing to do with the words.

No sooner had she opened the refrigerator to browse its contents — unlike the one in Mulder’s apartment, it appeared to be fully stocked with foods that weren’t breeding fungi or other suspicious organisms — than Mulder appeared in the doorway, arching his back and breathing hard with exertion. Scully gave him an appraising look as he grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and chugged half its contents.

“Good run?” she inquired.

He nodded and thrust a carton in her direction. “Here,” he said, still a little breathless. “Farm-fresh eggs. From the general store.”

Scully felt herself raising an eyebrow. “There’s a general store?”

He grinned. “Yes ma’am,” Mulder replied in what she took to be a clipped New England accent, “next to the tavern and just across the street from the schoolhouse.”

She regarded him with mock suspicion. “Please tell me the schoolhouse has more than one room.”

Mulder had propped one foot on a chair and was wrestling with a knot in his sneaker laces. “Barely,” he answered. “Let’s just say if the Scully family had moved to Chilmark, they might have had to hire an extra teacher to handle the influx of new students.”

He gave her a quick smile and, with an air of triumph, pulled the laces free. Then he stretched and grabbed one of the island mugs from the cabinet, bearing it aloft like a piece of evidence he was presenting to her in their basement office.

“I thought I could give you a tour today,” he said, a little tentatively. He tapped the map. “You know, so you’ll know which way is up.”

She smiled. “I’d like that,” she said. “Will there be a stop at the general store?”

He took another swig of water, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Believe it or not, there are several, although if I were you I’d avoid the Black Dog unless you want to spend your last paycheck on a zip-up fleece with a dog on it.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” she said drily.

* * *

“The thing about growing up on an island,” Mulder was saying as they drove down a road that curved lazily around a pond and back again, “is that you never have to go very far to reach the end of the world.”

“That reminds me of something my father used to say,” she said. “When we asked him how long he’d be deployed, he’d say, ‘As long as it takes to sail to the end of the world.’” She smiled at the memory.

He glanced at her. “What about your brother?” he asked innocently. “Does he, uh, have any interest in sailing to the end of the world?”

“Mulder,” she said reprovingly; she and Bill had come to an uneasy truce several months ago, likely owing to the fact that she had been generously editing out large chunks of her personal life in her conversations with him.

“Speaking of reaching the end,” Mulder interrupted smoothly, pulling the car into a parking space. “Let’s go explore the beginning,” he said cryptically.

They got out of the car and walked past a row of shuttered tourist shops. Scully turned to look curiously at the window displays — dreamcatchers, wind chimes, Wampum jewelry.

“This area was settled by the Wampanoag Indian tribe in the 1600s,” Mulder explained as they approached a sign that read TO THE CLIFFS.

“We’re not rock climbing, are we?” Scully asked, alarmed by a sudden vision of Mulder retrieving harnesses and helmets from the trunk of his car.

“In a manner of speaking,” he responded, gallantly extending his hand to help her up the few steps.

Mulder had not been exaggerating: They had reached the end of the world. From the outlook Scully could see the land dropping away in a series of cliffs that looked like they were covered in reddish clay.

“Native legend says it was a giant named Moshup who gave the cliffs their scarlet hue by spattering them with the blood of whales he plucked from the sea by their tails,” Mulder announced, adopting a professorial tone; Scully supposed they had reached the historical portion of the tour. “Moshup lived on the mainland among the people until a giant bird began to capture the children and steal them away. No one could catch him. Moshup waded into the water after him and pursued him to this island. Under a great tree he found the bones of all the children.”

Mulder’s voice caught and he looked away from her, out to the sea Moshup had crossed in doomed pursuit. Scully touched his arm and felt him shiver beneath her hand.

Mulder cleared his throat.

“Moshup vowed never to leave the island,” he continued, his eyes still gazing out to sea. “He filled his pipe with tobacco and puffed the smoke out to sea to create a fog that would shroud the island from outsiders. But during storms they say the wind still carries the voices of the mothers wailing for their lost children.”

He turned back to face her, his eyes glittering a little in the gray light, and Scully found herself unprepared for the depth of the anguish in his face.

“They made a choice,” he said abruptly, and Scully knew he was no longer talking about the legend of the Wampanoag people. “My parents. They made a choice between us, between me and Samantha, and I — “ His hand slammed against the fence in frustration. “God, Scully, it’s been almost 30 years, and I still don’t know which one of us they were trying to save.”

His face was wet as she pulled him toward her.

“You’re not to blame for your family’s choices,” she said softly. Mulder’s head was bowed against her shoulder; her voice felt muffled into his hair. “You looked for her when everyone else had given up. You found her, Mulder. Now it’s all right to let her go.”

For a moment, he was still. Then she felt his shoulders heave and shudder, wracked in silent grief. She had given him, she realized, what his parents never had: the absolution he had craved for the sin he had never committed.

Months ago, in a moment of exasperation in their office hallway, she had asked him what more he could possibly hope to do or to find with his life’s work. She had meant it to be a rhetorical question, a reminder to Mulder that it was obvious to her when he wasn’t listening to a word she’d said.

But instead his answer had been immediate, as if he’d been waiting to say it every time in the past six years that someone had asked him what he was looking for. In a way, maybe he had.

“My sister,” he’d said, leaving her standing there reeling.

 _My sister_ — it had come out of nowhere, and yet everywhere. Mulder’s quest for the Truth — she always thought of it that way, the Truth with a capital T — was so all-encompassing, so encumbered with conspiracies and aliens and cover-ups, that it had become possible to forget that what had brought them together in the first place was a single missing and very human girl. A girl who, Scully reminded herself, had never been mourned in the way she deserved, who had hardly been spoken of at all except quietly in a dark motel room just days after they had met.

If she’d lived, she’d have been Scully’s own age now. She might have had children of her own, nieces and nephews for Mulder, who, Scully was sure, would have parlayed his considerable brain power into a career that was less “spooky.” He might have even settled down in the type of rural community he had admired those years ago in Home.

Instead, he had become like Moshup — a man who never left his island of grief.

They stood there for a long time. When Mulder finally pulled away from her, he gave her a watery, embarrassed smile.

“I didn’t mean to include a crying jag stop on the tour,” he said.

She squeezed his hand. “I think you needed it,” she replied.

* * *

“This looks cleaner than your usual choice of eating establishments,” Scully said as she surveyed the diner, where a sign in the window proudly proclaimed “Locally world famous since 1943.”

They had driven a half-hour from the “up” of up-island — when she had asked whether they were nearing the “bottom,” Mulder had merely smiled at her pityingly and shook his head — without stopping to see any sights along the way because, Mulder had explained solemnly, “I find it’s best to process grief on a full stomach.”

The diner was pure kitsch, with a row of old-fashioned stools at the counter and vintage signs advertising specials for $0.95. Scully opened her mouth to order a fruit plate and was forestalled when Mulder held up his hand.

“She’ll have the pancakes,” he said, shooting her a serious glance. “Trust me, Scully. You go on the Mulder family tour, you eat off the Mulder family menu.”

“My past experience with ‘Mulder menus’ is that they lead to coronary heart disease,” she countered lightly, but relented when Mulder repeated “Pancakes, Scully” with a hint of longing in his voice.

“You’ve probably noticed there’s a lack of culinary choice in Chilmark,” he said when the waitress had departed. “We’re right around the corner from the ferry terminal here, so we used to come here all the time when my father was headed off-island for work.” A corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “One of the few fond memories I have of spending time with my father.”

Scully folded her menu and set it beside her plate. “Mulder, how did your family end up here?” she asked curiously. “Living on an island 45 minutes off the mainland can’t have been logical for a Department of Defense employee.”

Mulder hesitated, his fingers toying with the edges of his napkin.

“My father wasn’t around much then,” he admitted quietly. “The Vineyard was my mother’s home. Where she’d grown up.”

Scully, who just weeks before had held Teena Mulder’s body in her hands, felt unexpectedly seized by the desire to understand her.

“What was she like, Mulder?” she asked softly, unable to help herself.

“She was…” Mulder sighed and then gave a hollow laugh. “I don’t think I’m even qualified to answer that. She was a woman with a lot of secrets.”

He looked down at his hands for a long moment. Then, in a voice so low Scully could scarcely hear him, he murmured, “He called himself my father.”

Scully felt herself grow cold. The peppy music in the diner suddenly seemed far away.

“Who?” she said sharply.

“You know who,” he said. “Him.”

“When?” she said, shock and revulsion warring in her mind. Mulder lifted his eyes to meet hers, and she could see the pain on his face.

“In the hospital. This fall. Just before he abducted me with my mother’s permission.” There was bitterness in his voice.

She felt a lump rise in her throat. “You told me you didn’t remember anything,” she said in a near whisper, trying and failing to keep the accusation from her voice. Even now, when she closed her eyes at night, it wasn’t hard to picture him splayed across the steel table, the way the ugly gashes in his skull stood out against his starkly pale skin. She had been convinced that she had failed him.

“I remember him,” Mulder said flatly. “I remember the things he showed me.”

“What did he…” Scully took a deep breath as the smiling waitress deposited their pancakes on the table. Mulder was shaking his head.

“Do you believe him?” she asked quietly. Mulder stared into his pancakes.

“Does it matter?” he said darkly.

Of course it matters, she thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to say the words aloud.

They looked at each other in silence, which Mulder broke by reaching for the syrup and ceremoniously pouring what seemed like a gallon over his pancakes.

“The syrup-to-pancake ratio is the key,” he said, his tone one of deep concentration.

Evidently they weren’t going to finish their discussion of the Mulder family soap opera after all. Before she picked up her fork, Scully reached across the table for Mulder’s hand, which fell still at her touch.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said quietly. She hoped he was astute enough to run that through his own Scully translator to know that it meant _I’m ready to listen when you’re ready to tell me._

They’d already kept too many secrets from each other.

* * *

Mulder glanced at her as they drove.

“Scully, can I ask you an important question?” he said seriously. She took a deep breath and said, “Sure.”

“I was right about the pancakes, wasn’t I?”

She looked at him. The corners of his mouth lifted in a smile, but he was staring straight ahead at the road.

“You were right about the pancakes,” she agreed, and then turned her attention back to the scenery.

She felt him clear his throat beside her.

“You’re right, you know,” he said quietly. “There are a lot of things I’ve been looking for for a long time. I think maybe it’s time to let some of it go.”

* * *

Ten minutes later Mulder had parked the car along a street of storefronts that seemed to Scully to consist entirely of ice cream and souvenir shops.

“You must have missed a lot of the action, spending summers off the island,” Scully commented as they exited the car. Mulder sighed in mock pity.

“Ah, Scully, you should know by now the action is wherever I am,” he smirked.

She raised her eyebrows. Mulder motioned her toward an alleyway. “Through here,” he said.

She felt a little like Lucy entering Narnia as they passed from the street to what could only be described as a fairyland. A large tabernacle was ringed with rows of small, trim cottages, each decorated with vibrant colors.

Scully looked around in wonder.

“This,” Mulder said, noticing her expression, “was my sister’s favorite place on the island.”

Scully, who had been a young girl herself once, instinctively knew why. It wasn’t because little girls liked to play with dollhouses. It was because there was something magical about the crooked streets clustered with gingerbread houses, something timeless and perfect for young children to explore.

“How,” Scully asked as she walked slowly around, “did this get here?”

“It’s a religious encampment,” said Mulder. “Settled by Methodists in the 1800s. They started with tents, and then they built these cottages.”

They stopped in front of a bubblegum-pink cottage decorated with white trim and hearts on its flower boxes.

“It’s beautiful here,” Scully said. “I can see why your sister liked it.”

Mulder smiled, looking as if he were remembering something. It was nice, Scully thought, to see him thinking about Samantha with fondness and not pain.

“Pick a house,” he said. She gave him a questioning look.

“It’s an old game. You pick your favorite, and I guess which one. And I know it’s not this one,” he said, tilting his head toward the pink house.

She smiled. “What about you? Do you pick a favorite?”

“I picked a favorite in 1968,” he said smugly.

“Well, then I’d better get started,” Scully said drily.

They strolled around the perimeter while Scully studied her choices. There were clapboard houses with yellow and orange trim, lilac houses with flowers etched onto the roofs, mint-colored houses with rocking chairs on the front porches.

“Every August, these houses hang up thousands of homemade lanterns. They have a big singalong in the tabernacle, and then they light up all the lanterns at once,” Mulder said. His eyes had that faraway look again. “Grand Illumination. It was Samantha’s favorite night of the year. She said it was like getting to see fireflies that stayed lit all night long.”

She reached for his hand and gave it a soft squeeze.

“It sounds lovely,” she said.

The campground stretched on much farther than Scully had expected. As they walked, she decided not to let go of Mulder’s hand.

“OK,” she said with finality as they reached the end of the path. “I’ve picked a house.”

“It’s that one,” Mulder said immediately, pointing to the cottage in front of them. It was a cool blue-gray color with two turrets and a wide, wraparound porch.

Scully shook her head. “I’m afraid not, Mulder.”

He frowned. “That one,” he guessed again, gesturing toward a smaller, greenish cottage with stars dangling from the porch.

She stifled a laugh. “Mulder, how many guesses do you get in this game?” she said mildly.

“Definitely this one, then,” he decided enthusiastically in front of a yellow house with lilac-colored shutters. Scully shuddered in mock distaste.

“OK, you show me my house, then,” he replied.

She tilted her head in thought, trying to conjure up a picture of the boy Fox Mulder. Not the clapboard houses, they were too tasteful; these cottages, too small. Inspired, she led him over to a large house painted in garish shades of green.

“This one,” she guessed.

Mulder’s mouth dropped open in surprise and delight. It was Scully’s turn to feel smug.

“Psychologist, know thyself,” she teased.

Then she walked him over to a small cottage colored in neutral tones. “This one is my favorite,” she said. She gestured to the small sign hanging from the porch. In neat, cursive letters it read “Respite.”

When she met his gaze, Mulder’s eyes were full of warmth. He seemed to be looking at her the same way he had that night in the hospital as the old year vanished into the new one: as though he was seeing something in her for the first time.

The air felt light and sharp between them. She had never noticed before how the green in Mulder’s eyes seemed to be lined with flecks of gold.

 _Respite_ , she thought, and then Mulder was kissing her.

He tasted just as thrilling as she remembered, sweeter this time without the scent of sweat and fear of imminent death that had clung to his T-shirt during that first ( _but now not the only_ , her mind thought dizzily) kiss. She felt his hand disentangle from hers and reach up to touch her hair.

“I wasn’t aware there would be a kissing stop on the tour,” she said breathlessly when their lips parted, and at the briefest moment of dismay in Mulder’s voice, she laughed in delight.

Mulder smiled — that true, dazzling Mulder smile was a sight to see, she thought.

“I think you’ve got down and up island straightened out,” he murmured against her cheek. “Let’s go home.”

“Let’s go home,” she agreed, and they walked out of the campground hand in hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Martha's Vineyard is one of my favorite places on Earth. I've always thought one of the most enduring mysteries of "The X-Files" is why the Mulder family would have a summer house in Rhode Island when they live in one of the best summer destinations in the northeast. So some of this was just me wrestling with my headcanon about that.
> 
> Canon puts the Mulders' address as Vine Road in Chilmark, which does not actually exist, but there is a Tanglevine Road in Chilmark, which is where I placed Mulder's childhood home in my geographic headcanon. 
> 
> You can and should visit all the locations in this story: the Chilmark General Store, the Allen Farm Sheep and Wool Company, Lucy Vincent Beach (in the off-season, like Mulder and Scully, because otherwise you need a resident permit), Aquinnah, the Art Cliff Diner in Vineyard Haven and the Martha's Vineyard Campground Meeting Association, or the "gingerbread houses." Grand Illumination truly is an inspiring sight, and the "pick a favorite house" game is one I play with my family.


End file.
